Tuesday, August 23, 2005

Nail biting time

I'm haunting the mail box again. Several things are due to show up soon--one of them being the final answer on whether or not a certain popular woman's magazine is buying my short story or not. The editor sent me a letter back in April asking if she could hold on to my story until August or September, because that's when they acquired their holiday stories--and mine was a Christmas story. She said she really liked it, just had to run it by the senior editor during the decision-making time. So my fingernails are gnawed to the bone.

I also have a full manuscript at St. Martin's that's been there since the end of May, and a partial with an agent that's been there since mid-April. I'm chomping at the bit because I have other stories I want to submit, but have to wait a bit on those.

Work is driving me nuts. I signed on with AFLAC, thinking I could do it part-time, around the concrete work and my writing. But after a whirlwind trip to California to take the baby girl to college, we're behind on the concrete and have jobs lined up for the next two weeks, my AFLAC district leader is about ready to brain me because I'm the only one in my group who hasn't sold anything yet (who has time???), and my writing is suffering terribly. I want to turn the clock back and go back to last fall, when I had lots of time to myself to just do what I wanted to do.

Tori
http://tinyurl.com/27kdl

Thursday, August 11, 2005

Wow, what a summer!


It's been a wild run and it isn't over yet. Since my father-in-law died in May, I haven't had a single day to myself. Besides working with my husband in the concrete business now, I've also taken on a sales job for AFLAC, selling supplemental insurance products. Great company, great products, but very stressful for a new salesperson. They have weekly quotas that I don't have a prayer of being able to meet--not where I live. Added to that stress is the stress of trying to get two kids ready to go off to college for the first time (youngest), or back to college for their junior year (second youngest) on a limited budget and while working the other two jobs.

And in the midst of that, I got a new idea for a hot, sexy story that I love. Wrote 10 pages last night. The first 25-30 pages of a book are always the easiest to write for me. It's pages 31-389 that are hard (the last 10 pages being pretty easy, also). Anybody else agree with that?

Well, it's after 8 and I should already be headed down the AFLAC highway. Have a great day!